DEI+B

DIVERSITY EQUITY INCLUSION BELONGING

BY ELAINE CH EUNG

Many events in recent years have highlighted and amplified the importance of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEI+B) efforts in our society. The Carey School has embraced its own role and responsibility to better understand these topics, explore how we’re doing, and ultimately develop ideas around what DEI+B means for us, including how we want to define and implement initiatives to better our school and community.

In Spring of 2021 we retained a wonderful, nationally renowned expert on this topic, Dr. Valaida Wise, and began the journey under her guidance. Most of this past school year has been focused on designing and implementing a “Climate Audit” within our extended community. We set out to understand how Carey is doing as it relates to Diversity (quantitative metrics related to race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender,

THE CAREY SCHOOL HAS EMBRACED ITS OWN RESPONSIBILITY TO IMPLEMENT INITIATIVES THAT WILL BETTER OUR SCHOOL AND OUR COMMUNITY.

family structure, etc.), Inclusion (how do members of our extended community feel about fairness and representation), Equity (do we have adequate resource allocation to reach equal outcomes), and Belonging, DR. VALAIDA WISE which is the nexus of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and optimally results in the feeling of security and being accepted and supported as one’s authentic self. What are our strengths? Where do we face challenges and where can we improve? What are our blind spots? The Climate Audit is performed in phases, and includes a review of the school’s administrative records, policies and handbooks; conducting focus groups with a wide swath of the extended Carey community; and a community-wide survey. This is an effort that has relied on the support and a tremendous amount of work from the administrative team, OneCarey, and the Board of Trustees. Thank you to all those who have participated and contributed your efforts, viewpoint and voice!

The Board of Trustees is engaged in these efforts through the Strategy & DEI committee. We have partnered with Dr. Wise and the administrative team through this process, and in parallel, also introduced a set of strategic topics and questions that can help shape the question of what we want DEI+B to mean for our school. One example is that we held a brainstorming session at the end of 2021 which explored the questions of: What should Carey have as its ultimate goals around DEI+B? What if Carey were a completely need-blind school – what would it take? How might Carey become a completely anti-racist school? And, how can Little Carey play a role in shaping the longer term trajectory of our community composition and approach to financial aid?

The work is going well and we expect conclusions from the audit to be completed by this fall, with the results shared with faculty, administration, Board of Trustees, parents and other stakeholder groups, along with key decisions that need to be made. It is also helping us to develop more specific ideas on the candidate profile for our Head of School search.

The effort will continue beyond this year and into next, when a strategic, measurable, [externally facing] implementation plan will be developed. This plan would be an important component of Carey’s next 5-year strategic plan. A really exciting element of this work is that it ultimately seeks to maximize the feeling of belonging for the Carey community at large. If we get the principles right for Carey and build a strong implementation plan, we hope to be able to unlock even more potential from the wonderful community we have at Carey for years to come.